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This is not the best of months, it seems, for Palestinians to undertake
major steps because the record to date has not been very promising.
If nothing else, there has been the deadly events in the Gaza Strip when
about 250,000 Gazans were commemorating the third death anniversary of
Yasser Arafat, last Monday.
Seven supporters of Arafat's party, Fatah, were killed when surprisingly
the police of its rival party, Hamas which is now in control of Gaza,
opened fire on the rally. More than 100 were injured and about 400 Fatah
supporters were arrested in this ugly encounter.
The most notorious day for the Palestinians, however, has been November
2, 1917 when the British foreign secretary, Arthur James Balfour, said
in a classified document sent to Lord Rothschild, a leader of the
British Jewish community, that the British government "favour(ed) the
establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people...
."
Thirty years later, on November 29, the United Nations voted a plan for
the partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, with "the
Greater Jerusalem area, encompassing Bethlehem, coming under
international control." This came at a time when Jewish community hardly
owned six per cent of the country.
The coincidence that a peace "meeting," sponsored by the Bush
administration, will also be held later this month in Annapolis to
settle the decades-long Palestinian-Israeli conflict has left many in
the Arab world feeling weariful and ominous.
Aside from this happenstance, there remains major stumbling blocks that
need to be overcome before there can be some movement.
The bloody clashes in Gaza, despicable as they may be, have come as a
reminder to the three key participants in the upcoming conference -the
Bush administration, Israel and Palestine - that they cannot for long
bury their heads in the sand.
Gaza is in the midst of a serious humanitarian crisis that must be
tackled immediately and be included in any settlement. More to the
point, the presence of Hamas in the West Bank cannot be dismissed
summarily.
On the other hand, the focus of the conference still remains unclear.
The Palestinians and Israelis were tasked by the Bush administration to
draft a document that will spell out the tour d' horizon or a general
framework for the upcoming negotiations. At the time of writing, this
document still seemed far from complete or comprehensive.
Israel has never in the past declared its readiness to execute its
all-important "parallel" obligation which is to "immediately dismantle(s)
settlement outposts erected since March 2001" and "freeze all settlement
activity including natural growth of the settlements." But in a
last-minute gesture it has been reported that Israel is now willing to
undertake this meaningless freeze.
But what is more disturbing is the absence of any reference to an Arab
role other than the desired presence of senior Arab officials at the
"meeting for few hours", as described by Israel's Prime Minister Ehud
Olmert.
What about the Arab Peace Initiative which expressed for the first time
Arab readiness to accept Israel provided it, too, is willing to agree to
a sovereign Palestinian state on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip along
with implementation of international resolutions covering "final status"
issues such as Palestinian refugees, borders and continued Palestinian
presence in occupied East Jerusalem.
Of late, there has been an alarming crescendo of voices maintaining that
the Annapolis meeting is actually a disguised attempt at creating an
anti-Iran bloc in the region to facilitate an eventual strike against
Tehran, as advocated by some Israeli officials and its supporters in the
US and, lately, in Nicolas Sarkozy's France.
"Iran is choosing to destabilise the Middle East, pursue nuclear
capabilities and threaten our allies, especially Israel," US Secretary
of State Condoleezza Rice told a Jewish meeting on Tuesday in Nashville,
Tennessee. Late last month, she had warned the House Foreign Affairs
Committee that a two-state solution in the Middle East is in jeopardy.
"Our concern is growing that without a serious political prospect for
the Palestinians that gives to moderate leaders a horizon that they can
show to their people that indeed there is a two-state solution that is
possible, we will lose the window for a two-state solution."
In fact, a conference will be held next week in London at the University
of London where prominent Palestinian, Israeli as well as American
intellectuals will argue for "A Single State in Palestine/Israel", or as
one panelist put it, "Leaving the Cake Whole".
* An Arab American columnist based in Washington.
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